270 
disorders. What would be an easy task for 
the medical adviser on one day, might be 
attended not only with difficulty, but fear 
of failure, on the next; so rapid in their 
strides do we find those maladies which 
implicate especially the organ of biliary. 
secretion. It is to the intertropical coun- 
tries that we must go to witness these con- 
tests between disease and1nedicivue in their 
full measure of force; but even here in 
England, during the antumnal mixture of 
hot days with damp and dewy evenings, 
cholera is eften formidable in its aspect, 
and rapidly fatal in its career, unless the 
speedy and judicious interposition of art 
say nay to its fearful menaces, 
Let any one who doubts the efficacy of 
medicine in subduing disease read the mas- 
terly account lately presented to the world 
by Dr. Mason Goon, of the spasmodic 
cholera of India; and let every student 
of medicine who has not seen the volumes 
of Dr. G. to which the reporter now refers, 
forthwith procure them. The work enti- 
tled “The Study of Medicine,” with all 
its faults, for faultless it is not, affords a 
noble instance of what genius may accom- 
Report of Chemistry and Ewperimental Philosophy. 
{Oct. 1, 
plish when backed by industry and regu- 
lated by taste; and we have now, what 
previously we had not, a body of medical 
instruction to which the amateur cnl- 
tivator of the science can apply, without 
being scared by technicals on the one 
hand, or misguided by empiricism on the 
other.* 
Bedford-row ; 
D. Uwins, M.p. 
Sept. 20, 1823. 
«* The reporter has had another opportu” 
nity of seeing the cancerous breast,to which 
he last month referred, under Mr. Samuel 
Young’s treatment by pressure ; and he is 
happy to say that the progress towards 
cure has been during the few preceding 
weeks, particularly rapid. Mr. Foster, 
of Guy’s Hospital, (the reporter is now at 
liberty to mention names,) expresses him- 
self fully satisfied that the schi:rous mass is 
very considerably reduced, as is Mr. 
Desormaux himself, the husband of the 
lady who is the subject of the malady. Mr. 
Desormaux is an apothecary residing at 
No.16, Charlton-street, Somers’ Town. 
REPORT OF CHEMISTRY AND EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 
—— 
M LAPLACE, the modern high-priest 
¢ of the exploded doctrine of at- 
traction, and who considers profundity in 
mathematics a substitute for COMMON 
SENSE, is publishing new speculations on 
the tides, on the shape of the earth, &c. 
&c. founded on the doctrine of a central 
or converging force in the sun, &c. on the 
principle, in regard to the tides, that the 
sun and moon actually push up the waters 
from the bottom of the sea! In like man- 
ner, this able mathematician has abused 
his science by papers’ and volumes about 
molecular and capillary attraction, although 
a tenth part of the same analysis devoted 
to experiments with a few bungs would 
have shewn him, that all such approaches 
are mere results of the intercepted pres- 
sure, or elasticity, of the gas in which the 
bodies are saturated. MM. Arago, and 
other French speculators, are in like man- 
ner rendering Nature ridiculous by their 
discussions about electrical and magneti- 
cal fluids ; when it is palpable that nosuch 
fluids exist; and they might, with equal 
propriety, treat of a moonshine fiuid, a 
shadow fluid, or of the climax of absurdity, 
M. Laplace’s gravific atoms, whose rate 
of motion he has yet been unable to deter- 
mine ! 
A learned foreign professor pretends to 
have discovered that all atmospheric aque- 
ous substances, as hail, snow, rain, and 
dew, contain iron combined with nickel ; 
from which the attempt is made, to account 
for the recent formation of zrolites, prior 
to the every-day occurrence, somewhere, 
of the fall of meteoric stones from the sky, 
forgetting that the major part of these 
Masses are stony and not metallic, and 
overlooking the important facts of the 
prodigious velocity in an horizonta) direc- 
tion of the principal masses from which 
the falling stones, in the shape of frag- 
ments, invariably, have just before been 
detached with explosive violence, often 
visible to the eye as a train of sparks. We 
have in Engiand two better theories on 
this subject: one by Mr. Farey, which 
refers these masses to the class of satelli- 
tule, revolving in elliptical orbits around 
our earth, so near thereto as to dip into 
its atmosphere, at every return to their 
peregio, which occny at intervals of about 
nine hours; but, every one of which suc- 
cessive returns, happening over a tresh and 
distant spot, and, in the majority of in- 
stances, over the vast ocean, or in the 
day-time on unfrequented lands, &c. The 
other, by Sir Richard Phillips, who as- 
cribes meteorolites to small bodies gene- 
rated and floating in space, which. the 
earth encounters in its orbit. 
It has been discovered in America, that 
a round thin plate of soft iron, fixed on a 
lathe spindle and turned with great rapi- 
dity, is capable, in a very surprising man- 
ner, by the motion of its edge, of cutting 
hard steel, a saw plate for instance, pre- 
sented to it; the groove in the steel ac- 
quiring an intense heat, without the same 
degree of heat penetrating the soft iron, 
as is asserted by the Rev. Mr. Dagget in 
Professor Silliman’s Journal. 
A new 
